Friday, March 25, 2005
paucity of entries... and Anti-Darwinism...
erdoc apologizes for the paucity of entries in past months due to his attentions being required elsewhere...
But he will relate the contents of an e-mail message he received from a
frustrated colleague from across the globe:
"Have you, xxx, ever considered that in what we do, we are uh... anti-darwinists? By that I mean we are artificially selecting who gets to live and hence go on to pollute the gene pool with their genes... And it's not just the genes, for you have to remember, besides nature, nurture is vitally important as well... so they go on to reproduce and not just pass on their potentially tainted genes but their definitely decidedly anti-social way of life... Why do we persist in doing what we do? Why do we keep saving their butts?
Think about your typical heroin DOA OD... On his 5th or 6th time he finally tops himself at age 20 but not before producing 5 kids with 3 or 4 other heroin addicts... What sort of chance do these kids have? What will they do? The same?
More disturbingly, how many productive citizens do you know out there who have 5 kids?
And what then, becomes of Society...."
Erdoc can understand where this fellow is coming from... We know we can and have done influence the evolution of other species... Cows were not always cows as we know them today.
We artificially selected them. As with dogs... rabbits, cats.... and even staphyloccoci... and VRE... And God knows, how many other microbes...
BUT, this is a question that is highly inflammatory and borders perhaps on the realm of eugenics to put it politely. But you got to wonder sometimes... And sometimes your wondering/wandering takes you into places you really don't want to go into....
Posted at 01:16 pm by erdoc
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Wednesday, February 16, 2005
What the hell is
happening at PalmSource?
What are the implications of this? Cobalt will die?
Posted at 07:51 pm by erdoc
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Monday, January 31, 2005
Reflections on the morbidly obese patient...
1. they are hard to intubate
2. they are near impossible to resuscitate
3. they sometimes do not fit ambulances...
4. veins.... can be a problem....
5. chest x-rays? urrrghhhh...... okay, we know there are lungs there but...
6. CT scans? well, most CT machines can't take people > 200 kgs.
Then there's the girth of the detector ring...
7. Ever tried reducing a fracture/dislocated ankle in someone like this?
8. Well first you gotta diagnose it... Sometimes without an x-ray it's hard...
So you see apart from the usual medical reasons for not being overweight, there are practical considerations as well...
Be good to your body. Do not abuse it!
Posted at 10:09 am by erdoc
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Thursday, January 27, 2005
 |
US$499 gets you a low end ibook without keyboard and screen in a nifty teeny little package.
Not a bad deal, given there's only one real player in the market of selling macintoshes.
You get way more bang for buck buying an OEM or DIY PC but you can't get a mac for that price.
OS/X is a VERY impressive OS, despite being quite bloated and having Aqua, that eye-candy processor intensive and ultimately klunky user interface... ( ONE BUTTON MICE? Come on, mate?). There's also a lot to be said about objective C which IMO is probably a lot cleaner and intuitive than C++.
Thank heavens you have to buy your own keyboard and mouse for the ones apple sells are, pardon my french, sh!te.
Cons: not enough pre-installed RAM, slow, small note-book hard-drives.
But it's a mac, and people will buy it because of that.
(erdoc thinks ibooks are a much better deal) |
Posted at 08:52 pm by erdoc
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Wednesday, January 26, 2005
A viable keyboard solution for palmtops?
Interesting concept, if it works...
But for US$200.... Mmmm....
erdoc says bring back the thumb boards...
Posted at 09:56 am by erdoc
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Tuesday, January 25, 2005
More threats of gloom and doom... H5N1 anybody?
It's the
nejm for you...
sensationalist, hype or otherwise... there is a vaccine for it.
weighing the pros and cons, erdoc promptly got his paws on a vial...
wash your hands, y'all...
Posted at 10:28 am by erdoc
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Saturday, January 01, 2005
What erdoc would like to see this year:
1. PalmOS 6 machines (quite likely perhaps).
2. A cheap portable and easy to use ultrasound machine.
3. Some way of simplifying the usual tangles of monitor leads, iv tubing etc... you know what I mean. Wireless monitors? Mmm.... Well you still got the infusions and iv tubing... and interference may not be a good idea.
4. G5 ibooks (okay, don't need them but they'd be cool nevertheless).
5. Good usable battery life on portable devices (this includes PDA's, laptops as well as portable monitors and ventilators :)
Anything else you'd like to see?
Posted at 12:00 am by erdoc
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Friday, December 31, 2004
Well, goodbye 2004...
It's that time to start making resolutions again...
For those of you who do not any yet, here's the golden one, albeit in the negative. Admittedly erdoc has a vested interest in you keeping it :)
Do not do anything irresponsible that could land you or someone else in the ED.
i.e. do not even think of driving if you're drinking or doing drugs or using your mobile phone or just being a d!ckhead altogether. That sort of thing.
And don't try to kill yourself. If you don't know how, you'll probably mess up, and guess where you'll land up...
Posted at 11:59 pm by erdoc
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Thursday, December 30, 2004
While erdoc was out surfing today he caught a big
fish...
A lot of stuff in here worth sparing a second thought now and then...
Posted at 08:13 pm by erdoc
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Tuesday, December 28, 2004
Neal at Quartus has been busy and it looks like a fairly major revision of
Quartus Forth is imminent...
Some may find the stack notation of forth rather daunting and inefficient... For others, forth itself may be as fresh and refreshing an approach to programming as ever...
Posted at 05:28 pm by erdoc
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